Colman, Co-founder of The Eager Beaver Baseball Association
In 1955, Colman co-founded the Eager Beaver Baseball Association (EBBA) with sportsman Gordon Berryhill and that organization renamed its all-star day -- "Frank Colman Day" -- in 1984. The EBBA is still going strong 51 years later, having mentored thousands of young ballplayers.
Before Frank Colman died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 65, he had been working at the University of Western Ontario in the maintenance department.
Sixteen years later in 1999, Frank Colman was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. In a letter to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999, Yogi Berra wrote that he visited Colman at his home in Canada on several occasions.
"I've made a lot of friends in baseball through the years, but I'll always remember Frank as one of the most decent and genuine people that I ever met," Berra wrote. "I was proud that he was my friend."
His son, Frank Colman Jr., accepted the Hall of Fame plaque at the ceremony in St. Marys, Ontario with a large contingent of Colmans on hand.
"If he were here, I think he would say his greatest accomplishment has been his contribution to the community through the work with the Eager Beaver Baseball Association," his son said. "That was his real pride and joy. He really loved that kind of work."
In 2005, Colman was also inducted into the London Sports Hall of Fame at the John Labatt Centre.
Read more about this topic: Frank Colman
Famous quotes containing the words eager, beaver, baseball and/or association:
“The eager fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me:
For this losing is true dying;
This is lordly man’s down-lying,
This his slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)